I get it. There’s some real jerks around here. Whether they’re constantly argumentative, downright rude, always acting in bad faith, just plain trolls, overly opinionated on every subject, have the social skills of a Nausicaan, or whatever - the Fediverse is growing, and it’s bound to attract toxicity in one way or another.
This post is mostly a PSA for anyone who’s feeling like leaving because they’re tired of dealing with things like that. I’ve been there several times myself, I know exactly how you feel, and I’m tired of seeing good people harassed off the platform.
Just remember that blocking is a very powerful way to stay in control of your experience. Be it a set of users, me specifically, a list of keywords, a whole community, or an entire instance: if it’s causing you nothing but stress, hit that block button and see if that improves your experience here. Unlike the alien site, there is no limit to the number of entities you can block; you’re in control.
Another thing to keep in mind is different instances have different vibes, and the experience can totally differ depending on the instance’s moderation and federation policy.
In conclusion, your experience here can be what you make of it; don’t be afraid to just block the parts that stress you out. You’re not “creating an echo chamber” as everyone likes to say (often in bad faith) – you’re just taking care of yourself.
Filters are nice too, if you’re here for escapism rather than news.
Currently, only lemmy apps support keyword filtering. But on lemmy 1.0 we’re going to get proper keyword filters :DDDD
Wait, were not even on 1.0 yet?
Nope. Latest version is 1.19.11 but next should be 1.0
I tried filters on other platforms, the results weren’t that good. Yes, you blocked a word, but people often use images with text for some reason, and filters don’t work with them.
Musk agree with this, filters work wonders.
How do you do this - I think I need this
Your filter list is very similar to mine. Makes a hell of a positive change.
I’d add “report” to that advice. If somebody is outright being jerks, that is probably against your instance’s rules — and if it isn’t, there are plenty others to choose from.
Blocking helps you, but reporting people (or instances) that are just here to troll will help others.
I read all reports on my instance (i get reports on our users and from our users, too; so i see quite a lot) rest assured, all your reports actually do something.
True. If it’s report-worthy, absolutely. But there are certainly accounts that aren’t violating any rules but can still be a source of stress. Those are often the “rules lawyer” type who knows exactly how to stay right on the line without crossing it.
Counterpoint is that if that person is finally banned, they’re 9 times out of 10 just going to spin up a new alt and start back up with the same shtick. If everyone just blocks them, they’re just shouting into the wind wondering why no one’s taking their bait. I dislike how Reddit had “shadow bans”, but I can see how they would be effective when used surgically.
Temp bans (a couple of days), work too. If they’re actually trolling, they usually won’t come back. Then just temp ban the next alt if they do, repeat.
Good to know, and yeah, kind of matches what I’ve observed. I tend to permaban outright trolls, but yeah, they usually spin up a new account and never come back to that, so it’s probably overkill. I guess I just don’t like leaving the door open for them to come back…just in case lol.
For me, I temp ban because it makes it more easy to do. I don’t wrestle with whether or not I’m doing the right thing. Instead, I know it’s only temp so no one was harmed if I make a mistake. It’s more for me to take out the trolls early on.
I agree with this 100%. The mods can’t get rid of the bad guys if they don’t know about them. There are very few mods for relatively big communities, help them out if you see something going bad. They might not agree with you, but it’s still good practice if people aren’t following the rules.
Agreed. I report bad behavior where I see it. I’ve only blocked one person, becausen they took a downvote as a personal attack and started DMing me.
You’re very right. Blocking when they are being an asshole is just putting your head in the sand. It might feel petty but remember that others are probably also impacted by their shitty behaviour.
I know for a fact I’m opinionated, and don’t have problems sharing them.
Please, by all means, block me if you think seeing my comments is adversely affecting you. I’d rather be ignored by someone than make their day worse (unless they’re actively trying to make others miserable, but that’s a separate discussion)
The fediverse has definitely gotten a little less hostile after blocking a few things.
And remember you can jump ship to another instance at any time! I’ve hopped a few times but for now my instance is filling my needs without much drama that I am aware of.
I quickly went over your comment history of the last 30 days and you have almost no downvotes. You are a wholesome person and I’m glad you are here!
I think it’s less about having strong opinions and more with how those are expressed. But either way, you’re here with a good attitude, and that’s appreciated.
Same!
The biggest toxicity comes from the tank triad. I have blocked them and now it is peaceful.
That’s like the “install uBlock Origin” first step as far as I’m concerned lol.
Yup. Learned it the hard way. My first account was with lemmy.ml and it got banned because of criticizing China. I consider myself leftist and the amount of censorship the tank triad do to ensure China numba wan is mind numbing.
Who are the tank triad?
Lemmy.ml Lemmygrad Hexbear
Basically the 3 far left instances that will enforce the discourse to be Marxist and anti-west.
Most instances are defederated from the latter two but not the first because that instance is run by the main Lemmy devs (who are communists)
Not even communists. I have had communists as friends during my grad and undergrad. Tank triad are a worser kind. They actively hinders any discussion against China. Tianenmen? Never happened. Mao’s genocide? western propaganda. Chinese imperialism in Tibet? China reclaiming its historical boundaries. Basically China and USSR can never do anything wrong. If they did, its western propaganda.
Also why cant they defederate from lemmy.ml? That should be technically possible as the code is open source and can be fetched easily to run an instance?
Anyone can defederate from .ml but they have a lot of users being the dev run site, so many don’t. Or at least that’s the reason lemmy.world has given in the past about why they have don’t federate with hexbear and lemmygrad but still do with ml
They’re not Marxists sadly, they’re worse.
They’re Stalinists who want authoritarianism.
Marx wouldn’t have condoned having a dictator/Tzar
And not in a productive way, either. Once in a while I see a couple hexbear users in a thread, so I’m guessing crossposts happen. But their comments are mostly just name-calling and shitting on liberals.
And never, ever criticizing the Right. These people cheer for Trump more than the fucking MAGA crowd.
I’m not super up to date with terminology but I wouldn’t call them far-left. I believe authoritarianism is right wing ideology.
I have blocked 264 users, 9 communities and 4 instances and it’s made Lemmy much better for me toxicity wise. Whenever a debate gets toxic or someone starts just insulting or discussing in bad faith or I just get a bad vibe from them - I block.
You’ve been here for year and blocked 264 people, I mean this in the nicest way possible, but ever consider the problem is not the people you block? I think i’ve legitimately blocked maybe 20 people in my whole entire online life (I’m almost 40), most of it spent on platforms like Reddit.
But then I have a high aversion for echo chambers and only block obvious trolls, mostly to keep them from blowing up my notifications. I feel it’s much better to just not give random strangers on the internet the power to actually affect your mood.
I have a high aversion to echo chambers because I too am a human same as everyone and find people just agreeing with me grossly unstimulating and seek out takes opposite to mine to understand them, deconstruct them and apply them to my own views either to refine/change them with a newly gained perspective or to argue against the opposing view.
I blocked all of those people because they are just unsalvageable people in my view. I was discussing the finer points of relative drug danger with some guy in a thread, talking about hypothetical lethal dosages for ht-2a classical psychedelics, and the guy was bringing up “Woodstock” and “brown acid” and how he “heard of a guy” etc etc.
There’s no point discussing anything ever with a person like that, it’s clear that we think along such different lines the differences are irreconcilable, like trying to convince someone not to be a bigot or disprove someone’s belief in religion/conspiracy with evidence and reason, when they just believe in that stuff, they don’t think about it and weren’t reasoned into it.
Blocking them actually is removing their ability to affect your mood 😌
I’m with you in spirit if not numbers. My experience with hexbear users led me to blocking the whole instance, and I regularly block people I don’t even converse with based on how they treat other users or other topics. If someone has such a bad take on topic A, I don’t care about their possible opinions on topic B and C in the future.
I get the argument of echo chamber isolation, but most of the things I’m willing to block people over are also things that I won’t be changing my mind about because of a forum post.
I never thought I needed to block any user, because, you know, I’m a big kid and I can handle any of the dirty words. Turns out, there are just reavers out there in space with their cores exposed just letting the hatred and radiation wash over them. I have all this empathy and I know they were once people and maybe they can be redeemed, but no. They are reavers. Block and move on with caution.
I’ve blocked communities and instances that don’t speak English, ones that have absurd ideological basis (anarchy supporters), and occasionally people who just say really dumb things, a lot.
I vastly prefer encouraging blocking over censorship/moderation. If someone is being an asshole, having the ability to say it, vent those feelings for a moment, then readjust is a catharsis that’s been nearly outlawed especially on platforms
onlike TikTok.Obviously not everything should be permitted and everything has its limits, but the internet seems to over correct things into a passionless husk of forced friendliness. To shove people into forming a facade that feels like a shrinking cage. Sterile.
Curating my own experience has been invaluable and I highly encourage it.
absurd ideological basis (anarchy supporters)
I am not a community but can you please add me to your list
This wasn’t an open invitation for everyone to out themselves but sure, take care.
Blocked for calling anarchists absurd.
That is a dumb take and you could look it up on Wikipedia if you cared and iota to read many influential anarchist authors e.g. Kropotkin or Grabber, but trying to prove wrong every wrong person on the internet I’d never have time for myself so I’m moving on.
Obligatory this isn’t an airport you don’t have to announce your departure joke.
I’ve never shyed away from arguing with anarchists but this is already resolved so thank you? The enlightened anarchist simply has no time for the meager law loving peasants.
I’ve yet to block anyone here and the only one I had blocked on Reddit was Gallowboob.
Well that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time.
Im a big believer in block. I think its better for people to peruse all and block communities they are uninterested in and you should totally block users you don’t like. To me it should be like real life. Don’t hang with folks you don’t like. My hope for the fediverse is instances that only remove things to stay out of legal trouble and communities that only block things that are unrelated. I want all the big tools to be at the user level. Bottom up.
Additional PSA to admins not running a “universal free speech” instance- if you see someone someone being obnoxious it’s probably annoying your users just as much as is is you. Don’t put the onus fully on users to curate their experience. The Fediverse needs our adults in the room!
Make sure to also report the people you see being toxic, astroturfing, or downright attacking users. Many instances have policies against this and reporting them will increase the likelihood they’ll be dealt with, in some cases permanently.
This is something that should be discussed more since blocking is not a moderation function that makes the platform better, it’s a tool for people to pretend the problems don’t exist. I’m not a fan of pretending issues don’t exist, especially since I’m a mod and that would be insanely counter-productive.
Oh, yeah, that goes without saying. Report anyone whose behavior warrants it. I’m just mainly reminding people that blocking can be a way to take control of your experience. It took me a while to fully appreciate the block button and get over my FOMO (in the earlier days of Lemmy, blocking even a few people would cut down the amount of content drastically; thankfully that’s no longer the case).
Semi-specific (but still intentionally vague) example for “block” candidates are some accounts that even the mods are like “Look, I don’t like them either, but they’re not breaking any rules”. But, in general, just don’t be afraid to block what or whoever stresses you out.
Is it the people that are toxic? Or is it the world or a living in right now?
toxic people made the world toxic which in turn made more people toxic
By all means, use the block feature to remove stressors if it helps.
For me personally, unless someone is actively haranguing me in DMs I’d rather not block them. Sure people can place comments that get me riled up. Or sometimes they seem downright hostile. Maybe they’re having a bad day, you can’t say. But it goes both ways, if I’m tired or having a bad day I could be misinterpreting people’s comments and blocking them for no reason.
If a comment is so bad/rude it becomes rule-breaking I’d rather report it and have a moderator tell them off, it might be a valuable lesson for them or if they are repeat offenders the mods can dish out appropriate punishment. This keeps the instance and community in question healthy.
Thanks for reminding the people arguing with me, personally im going to just let them deal with me
Yes and no.
I am a big fan of block buttons and use them quite liberally (if someone responds to me in a manner that makes it clear they have no intention of having a conversation? I never see them ever again).
But the problem is that it only blocks it for the user who blocks them. So harassment is still a thing and now even fewer people are likely to flag it for moderation (to the extent that works).
There is obviously room for abuse but I am a firm believer that any block feature must be bidirectional. If user A blocks user B then A and B can no longer see each other or interact. Which would be a fundamental lemmy feature which makes things difficult.
But “just block them” is good for people who are annoying. Not for people who are abusive. And while the latter isn’t SUPER common on lemmy, there are still a good number of people who respond to the simplest of things with “Fuck you you fucking moron and you should go kill yourself”
